


Poison in Your System

by Ivyzord



Series: A Thought, Uncovered [2]
Category: Disco Elysium (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27202724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivyzord/pseuds/Ivyzord
Summary: After realizing that he has feeling for Kim, Harry got a new thought project. He is apparently attracted to men. He's not sure what to do with that information and why does it wake in him this melancholic sense of sadness...A  exploratory piece about Harry focusing on his internal struggles with bisexuality, self-loathing and his past behavior.
Relationships: Harry Du Bois & Dora Ingerlund, Harry Du Bois & Kim Kitsuragi, Harry Du Bois/Kim Kitsuragi
Series: A Thought, Uncovered [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052060
Comments: 16
Kudos: 39





	Poison in Your System

**Author's Note:**

> It's written in a form of a Thought Cabinet entry with Problem and solution and Skills as Harry's internal dialog.
> 
> To aid with understanding of this I strongly recommend reading the solution to the the"The Fifteenth Indotribe" though if you missed it.
> 
> Kim and Dora are mentioned in the story. The relationships are touched upon and analysed but the text doesn't really have a romantic focus. (...sorry.)

**Problem** : There is some fallout to your revelation about your feelings toward Kim. An additional realization: You seem to be attracted to men. Where did that come from? Is is something new or just forgotten? Has it always been there? You have a vague feeling he is not the first man you where attracted to but there is this... old musty thought in the recesses of your brain. It’s like there is something wedged between cogs of your mind. It have prevented you from exploring that possibility further before. Made your mind stutter whenever this topic was brought up. Yet you feel different about it now. What changed?

* * *

COLD DARK BEDROOM -You somehow know, as you always do, exactly what time it is. You woke up too early again. The black nothingness around you offers nothing in the way of comfort. The thoughts drift through your head like lost pieces of wreckage at a stormy see. You won’t be falling back asleep so you might as well start the day. The bed frame squeaks restlessly under your weight as you sit up.With a click you turn on a little night lamp, dim light revealing your immediate surroundings.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN - Rise and shine, superstar. Time to move on from the bad dreams and to the nightmare of your waking life.

HOT COFFEE CUP -You hold your coffee in both hands trying to worm yourself up hoping that the coldest months are over soon. Your thumb runs over a course crevice in the ceramic surface. You take a sip of the bitter beverage and try to swallow the truth.

SUGGESTION - You like Kim. You want Kim and he... is a man.

RHETORIC - The complexities of the word you where reborn into might still be a little unclear but you got the feel for the it enough to realize that these feelings are not exactly universally accepted. Yet you can’t think of any real, tangible way in which it is wrong. Besides, Kim also likes men… It can’t be that bad to be that way. For some reason your mind stutters and your veins freeze when you try to think about it.

 **A VAGUE MEMORY** \- The end of summer. The lowering sun is warm and the wind is mild but you know it’s going to get colder soon. The idyllic atmosphere is somewhat disturbed by the distinct toxic smell from the swampy lake you hang out around. It doesn't matter much You’re used to it by now. You all are, the whole fifteenth indotribe...

REACTION SPEED - The memory dissipates before you manage to connect it to anything. You’re not sure why it would come back now.

INLAND EMPIRE – You should probably turn away. You don’t want to relive that.

VOLITION - But You’ll probably have to at some point. Just brace yourself and focus on what can be done now.

RHETORIC - Are you absolutely sure you like men like that? Can Kim be an exception?

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Oh please when in doubt just ask the expert. I got the hard facts here.

You have been thinking about men in your… private time with some regularity.

PAIN THRESHOLD - You just felt terrible about it every damn time, sick with some vague guilt.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – You tried to make yourself think exclusively of them ladies. I’d say bring em’ all in, no reason to restrict yourself like that.

YOU - So I’m a what? A part-timer in the homosexual underground?

ENCYCLOPEDIA – A term rattles around your head. Bisexual. That's the word to use here. You’re pretty sure you have SEEN the word before. You red about it.

 **A VAGUE MEMORY** \- You have checked it out a long time ago. You remember that the lady in the library assumed that it’s something for your investigation. You did not correct her. In fact you played it up a little.

ESPRIT DU CORP - You had your RCM insignia on you and you misused them as a cover up for your own curiosity. Seems like the buried feelings surfaced sometime during your work as a policeman. Kim might not have been the first fellow officer you felt attracted to.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY - Well, there is something to be said for a man in a uniform... with a pair of handcuffs…

YOU - Kim almost never wears his uniform, though…

ELECTROCHEMISTRY – He still has the handcuffs, along with some other qualities that get you going. You know... maybe if you asked him nicely-

VOLITION – Simmer down. This is not that conversation for right now. Before we can even address your unprofessional feelings toward your fellow officer you got to solve the enigma of you.

 **A VAGUE MEMORY** \- A Boy sits whit you on a big moss-covered rock near a toxic-smelling lake.  
The rest of the tribe are running around somewhere with capes fashioned from stolen laundry bashing each other with sticks. They are just beyond your view You’re laughing at some idiotic thing so much your stomach hurts.  
Or maybe it’s because of the cheap pinkish soda of an undetermined taste you have been sharing.  
You finally manage to calm yourself after another bout of laughter. The other boy looks at you. The sun of the ending summer gives his skin a warm glow. Wind lazily ruffles some leafs making shadows dance on his skin. In that moment everything quiets down.

PAIN THRESHOLD – There are deep wounds running under your skin, covered over the years with fake bluster, colorful persona and copious amounts of intoxicating substances. Alcohol did not flush the poison from your system. All you succeeded in doing was sustaining the pain.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Like a viper preserved in a wine bottle.

VOLITION - You have to examine the bottle carefully and without breaking it and reintroducing the venom into your system let the snake go. Take a deep breath and take it from the top. You have some healing ahead of you.

PERCEPTION - Though you look somewhat better then the wretched thing that you cast your eyes upon in the whirling in rags bathroom mirror you’re still not well. Some damage will probably be present on your face and mind forever. Lately the shadows beneath your eyes just get more and more defined as you can’t sleep.

LIMBIC SYSTEM - It’s all only accented by the years of physical and mental abuse you have put us through...

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN - ...along with any other poor soul that happened to wonder into your orbit. This rediscovered doubt dose you no favors Harry, baby. You have to be careful not to bury yourself back into the darkness you just barely crawled out of...

YOU - Why all this panic? Why wouldn’t I be alright with this? If it was that bad couldn't I just pretend? I’m positive I like women too. It’s not like I have to act on this feelings, right? I could just choose to be with a woman and no one would be the wiser.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN - Oh, that’s a good one, Harry! That’s exactly how the worst of it went! That’s what you where trying to do and just look at the glorious results…

DRAMA - It would be enough that you would know. That this in not fully you. That there is still a parts of you you would consider shameful. A dark secret to hide. Something to be watching for, not letting it slip. Constant vigilance is exhausting. You where always trying to be… acceptable. Never feeling so.

EMPATHY – After you convinced yourself that this is something worth hiding the self-loathing in you just deepened. Unfortunately it took the form of aggression, directed both at yourself and those around you.

DRAMA – You used the thoughtless bravado to convince yourself and the others what a real man you are. 

AUTHORITY - You can always be louder, you can be tougher, more aggressive than the other guy.

EMPATHY - You where lost and angry. At men, at women, at society, but mostly at yourself. That’s why you where always provoking those situations.

RHETORIC - Why do you think you have chosen a living personification of the archetypal feminine beauty as your life partner?

CONCEPTUALIZATION – Her long golden hair straight out of a fairy tale.

ELECTROCHEMISRTY- The tight waist and the curves like those in the best nudy magazines.

DRAMA- No one would suspect you.

RHETORIC- You where clinging to her so desperately because she was your proof, your alibi. Your way not to face that other part of yourself, the one that liked everything she was not. After all if you stayed in this relationship, you told yourself, there’s no reason to address this.

DRAMA - But you always felt you have to act, even at home. You always unconsciously felt she was a cover up for what you can’t face in yourself. With time you grew to resent her as well as yourself. Yet you still felt unable to ever let her go.

EMPATHY - The poor woman. She was probably as confused by your actions as you. She didn’t deserve to live just to assure your identity. It’s clear that you loved her at some point and maybe, just maybe she would have understood you. It hardly matters now. You’re both long pass the point of no return. Long ago she even liked the bravado, before she either grew out of it or deciphered it as your facade.

AUTHORITY – That’s right! You always had to look strong in front of your girl! In front of any audience, really . Never let yourself seem feel inferior. Never let anyone know.

HALF-LIFE - See a guy looking at you funny in a bar? Who does he thing he is? You should punch him before he suspects anything, prove how manly you really are.

PAIN THRESHOLD - Not to mention that sometimes when you starve for touch badly enough a fist to the face feels enough like an acceptable substitute for connection.

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Your right hand mindlessly forms a fist. Phantom pain from past fights and inanimate objects you assaulted throbbing through it.

COMPOSURE – You realize that it actually makes you feel weaker. You shake your head and make yourself open the fist slowly. You look at the back of your hand and study the deep lines covering it

 **A CLEAR MEMORY** \- Your young-looking unwrinkled hand is just next to his. You think you understand. You think you saw a sign. You move it slowly over the rocky-mossy surface and touch the other boys hand awkwardly trying to make your fingers intertwine.

PAIN THRESHOLD - A punch that lands squarely on your jaw doesn't really hurt. Not as much as the way he looks at you as you rub your chin. Not nearly as much as the word he spits out at you, like venom.

You have never spoken about it to anyone. You’re guessing he did not as well. You both sort of avoided each other from that point on.

COMPOSURE – You manage to absorb the situation and not panic. Both of your hands hug the coffee cup closely, now empty and cold. It still hurts but you where expecting a gashing wound and all you feel is a dull, throbbing pain of an old scar.

EMPATHY - You try to understand your old friend now. As hard as it is, you try not to pass judgment either on him or yourself. Most of you, kids growing up in Faubourgh and North Jamrock in those post-revolutionary times, didn’t have the best family life. This behavior and the hurtful words he probably just brought from home. He didn’t really understand what he said. That was just a learned reaction. There was no one around to teach you any better.

 **A CRYSTAL CLEAR MEMORY** \- That night you lay sleeplessly in darkness on the bed cover running your hand over your scraped knee. You don’t quite remember how you got it but it must have been sometime while you where hastily getting up from the rock to run away. You think you never want to make such a mistake again. You want to... you have to learn to read people better.

That evening was the birth of the shameful feeling with an ugly name to go with it. It was closely connected to the sharp pain in your jaw and a sharper one in your lungs. A cruel lesson swiftly learned. You realize now what was the wrong lesson.

RHETORIC - The punch might have been the moment that the viper was hatched in your lungs but you fed it plenty of doubt throughout your life.

ESPRIT DE CORPS – The occupation you have chosen was a perfect terrarium for such a creature with all the machismo and ever-present jokes and assumptions. It also gave you an outlet for your worst coping mechanisms.

YOU - Why does it feel stupid now? Why I don’t care as much about those things as before?

VISUAL CALCULUS - You have lost your memories and before they reformed you gained something. You have been blessed with a rare gift of perspective. Unlike the most of lost souls occupying this planet you where able to take a few steps back and look at yourself.

CONCEPTUALIZATION - Some works are meant to be admired from the afar. Impressionistic paintings up close look like disorganized splotches. Only with the distance you gain the full picture.

RHETORIC - You just lost the burden of social expectations. You forgot exactly what is acceptable and you carved yourself a new path to understanding.

SAVOIR FAIRE - It doesn't hurt that you have been reintroduced to the idea by just about the coolest people you know.

The young, enigmatic, mesmerizing man you know only as smoker who seems confident in his smooth youthful skin and of course...

...Kim.

SUGGESTION - So you like Kim. Of course you do. How could you not? Not many people fit the kind patience and effortless cool in one neat package. He seems to tolerate you, like you even. Whatever you do don’t fuck it up for yourself this time.

INLAND EMPIRE - You don’t have to deny your true self and act with him. He have already seen your bad. Now that you remember why where you ashamed and afraid, take your time to get yourself in order. Whatever you discover here you have a feeling you won’t be alone with it this time. You gained distance and the painful connections have been severed. You can finally try to find yourself. People don’t change in a day but you can already feel the glacier of your doubts slowly melting away.

* * *

  
**Solution** : The treacherous snake have slithered out of your lungs. You’re still struggling with a residue of the venom in your system and it will take some time and effort to flush most of it out. Still It means you have the capacity to get better. You can stop your doubt from poisoning you and everyone around. You have to remember that this thoughts are just a part of you. They don't make you weak or lesser in any way. There might be a myriad things wrong with you but this attraction was never one of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> I might be a bit unfocused and confused but I hope the work turned out ok. I'm glad I did it anyway. There was some parts I had trouble getting through writing. Mainly the memory. I hope it's not as sad and taxing to read. 
> 
> Even though I realize that fanfics are supposed to give you that freedom I' m sometimes afraid I'm taking to much liberty for interpretation of some of the Harry's behavior. Anyway this is just my humble take on some of this things. I also hope It's written clear enough.
> 
> This is a part of a short series. This is a second one (First is romantic and the third one,if it will ever be created, should be NSFW)


End file.
